Isang Yun is a fascinating
figure, whose life was so extraordinary
that it comes close to distracting attention
from his music. He was the son of an
important Korean poet, Ki-Hyong Yun, and as a young
man he studied music in Japan. In 1941,
with the entry of Japan into the War,
Yun returned to Korea and was active
in resistance to the occupying Japanese,
being thrown into prison in 1943. After
a spell in hiding, he became a teacher
after the war was over. In 1955 he won
a Cultural Award which enabled him to
travel to Europe to study in Paris with
Pierre Revel and in Berlin with Boris
Blacher and others. He attended courses
in Darmstadt and compositions of his
were performed there and elsewhere in
Germany. By 1964 he had returned to
Germany and was living in Berlin. He
was still politically active and three
years later was kidnapped by South Korean
agents and forcibly returned to Seoul,
where he was imprisoned, tortured and
sentenced to death. Extensive foreign
protests – in which both von Karajan
and Stravinsky played a part - led to
his eventual release in 1969, when he
was permitted to return once more to
Germany, as a political refugee. He
eventually took German citizenship.
He became a Professor of Composition
in Hanover and Berlin, and performances
of his own music were frequent and well
received.

Yun’s music – as was
perhaps to be expected – fuses eastern
and western elements. Within his use
of western ensembles and genres, he
incorporates distinctly Korean ideas
and philosophies. Yun himself
said,"I was born in
Korea and project that culture, but
I developed musically in Europe. I don’t
need to organise or separate elements
of the cultures. I am a unity, a simple
person. It’s a synthesis." The
eastern models which so attracted many
modern composers came to Yun as his
birthright. There is no temptation for
Yun to use ‘oriental’ colours in any
kind of superficial fashion; his eastern
origins register in more profound ways,
as matters of musical philosophy more
than surface.

This valuable Naxos
CD represents some of Yun’s smaller-scale
orchestral works, from the mid-1980s.
All of his five symphonies are available
on CPO (see review)
and a selection of his chamber works
on Capriccio (see review).

Gong-Hu is perhaps
as near as Yun comes to sounding obviously
eastern. It is scored for three first
and three second violins, three cellos
and a double bass, plus solo harp. Ursula
Holliger gave the premiere in 1985,
accompanied by the Camerata Bern, under
the direction of Heinz Holliger. The
title – a more modern transliteration
would be konghou – is the name
of the Chinese harp, actually introduced
to China from Persia. Here, of course,
the solo instrument is a western classical
harp. The work starts slowly and expressively
and there are striking passages which
juxtapose pizzicato strings and bowed
strings.

Tapis pour cordes
exists in versions for string quintet
and - as here - string orchestra. There
are some luxuriant passages, though
a salty dissonance is never too far
away. Power and tenderness, strength
and delicacy are intimately interwoven
with one another. Like most of Yun’s
work it is more accessible than the
composer’s reputation might sometimes
suggest.

Yun’s first Chamber
Symphony is in a single long movement,
scored for strings plus pairs of horns
and oboes. It seems to traverse an emotional
landscape over which light gradually,
and fitfully, breaks. Imagery of light,
and of other natural movements and rhythms,
fleeting patterns in sky or water, often
seem appropriate to Yun’s music. There
is a fluidity at odds with orthodox
western structures - for all his occasional
employment of serialist methods - changes
of direction or dynamics often seem
not to be explicable by structural reasons
attributable to any external ‘model’,
but to have their own organic motivation.

It is, therefore, worth
noting his comments in an interview
with Bruce Duffie conducted in 1987
(i.e.) at much the time that most of
the music on this CD was being written
and first performed:

"My music doesn’t
have a beginning nor an end. You could
combine elements from one piece into
another piece very well. This is a Taoist
philosophy. Music flows in the cosmos
and I have an antenna which is able
to cut out a piece of the stream. The
part which I’ve cut out is organized
and formed through my own thought and
body processes, and I commit it to paper.
That's why my music is always continuous
- like the clouds that are always the
same but are never alike one to another."

The results are distinctively
beautiful and Naxos deserve our gratitude
in making available this music at so
reasonable a price. The performances
are assured and committed, the recorded
sound well balanced and clear.

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